Chapter 152: Repairs

The moment the transport ship's cargo bay was opened, Luke's eyes turned red.

"Jackpot, jackpot! It really is a supply vessel. It's practically like someone came to deliver a package right to my doorstep..."

Looking at the Chitauri transport floating quietly before him, Luke was overjoyed and began tallying up his loot.

Among the crates of supplies, raw materials took up more than half. The majority consisted of various recognizable and unrecognizable metals and alloys. In addition, there were several strange plates and large crates of components forged into bizarre shapes.

As for the rest, there were a few boxes containing what appeared to be... food?

Luke opened one, took a quick look, and then resolutely tossed it straight out into space.

Heaven knows what the Chitauri eat on a daily basis. What if this was canned dead rat or something? Ugh, gross, couldn't handle that.

He and the Four Roses didn't need to worry about meals here. The system had military rations for sale: Lady Seria's handmade cakes, which were very cheap. The only issue was that they probably had a bit too much preservative added, otherwise how could they have stayed preserved until now?

Anyway, this trip was definitely not wasted.

Just these metal materials alone would come in extremely handy!

Operating the Voltron, Luke rapidly dragged the transport ship into the asteroid belt, sneaking along with its large rear end tilted up like a weasel stealing chickens.

Using the cover of this asteroid belt, Luke estimated he had at least several hours to spare. By the time the Chitauri realized their transport had failed to arrive and came looking, it should give him enough time to first repair the mecha arm's transmission system.

Luke spent a dozen minutes or so separating the main body of his Storm mecha from the Voltron. The failure of the linkage system had previously forced him to maintain the combined state.

Of course, this wasn't difficult for him. Consulting the blueprints to check the failed joint nodes, he quickly pinpointed the problem.

As long as he could settle down to make repairs and had replacement materials, Luke was confident he could bring the Voltron back to full health right on the spot; it was merely a matter of time.

The 1.2-meter-tall aerial combat mecha, Storm, disengaged its combination locks and slowly detached.

With his freedom of movement restored, Luke then flew over to unlock the Four Roses as well. The Voltron thus disassembled itself, breaking down into one 6-meter-tall Lord of War and four modified Storm mechas.

Immediately afterward, Luke had the Four Roses pilot the Storms to help him dismantle the armor on the Lord of War's two arms. It took a fair amount of effort before they finally exposed the arm joints, which were almost completely jammed.

A glance at the Lord of War's joint sections revealed a rather miserable state: shattered pieces and heavy damage everywhere. It was a true miracle that it had managed to hold together until now.

Looking at this tragic sight, Luke wasn't surprised at all. The power of a nuclear explosion was no trivial matter. Even in the vacuum of space, where the blast's force would be severely attenuated, it wasn't something one could simply shrug off casually.

Who in their right mind would deliberately go and tank a nuclear blast? As it turned out, even Heavenly Realm technology couldn't hold up against humanity's absolute ultimate weapon...

Of course, material strength remained the key factor.

The Four Roses' modified Storms had endured the scouring of the nuclear fireball—a victory for the lowest-grade hardener.

Considering the difficult conditions at hand, they would have to make do with whatever materials were available locally, so advanced material hardening treatments were out of the question for now. If they could barely patch up the joints and transmission systems to get the Lord of War moving again, that would accomplish the goal.

This wasn't difficult for Luke, either.

Back then, he had managed to build the Storm aerial combat mecha using just a secondhand lathe. If it was merely a matter of replacing some parts, all he needed was a hammer.

Well, he didn't have a hammer either... So he'd just have to forge a hammer first.

Luke piloted his Storm into the transport's cargo bay and began picking and choosing through the crates.

He had to admit that the technology mastered by the Chitauri far surpassed that of humanity. Among these raw materials alone, Luke didn't recognize most of them, identifying perhaps only a fifth.

The rest were either alloys of strange colors or metal ingots with bizarre textures and unknown uses. For instance, if you gently poked one of the metal ingots, a hole would appear on the surface, but the moment you released it, it would quickly flow back into its original shape like mercury.

"Is this memory metal?" Luke poked it curiously, having the time of his life.

Unfortunately, the hardness of this metal seemed a bit lacking, making it unsuitable for manufacturing replacement parts for the joint areas.

Those parts required high-strength alloys, and the best choice would still be Adamantium.

Regrettably, Luke couldn't find any Adamantium in this stack of crates. After a brief moment of thought, he let it go. Adamantium was a haphazardly concocted recipe whipped up by humans; it wasn't surprising that the Chitauri didn't have it.

In the end, Luke selected an alien alloy to use as raw material.

It was a pitch-black alloy. Christina's analysis yielded rough data showing that its hardness and ductility were comparable to titanium alloy, but it possessed an extra, special anti-resistance property.

For now, it made for a decent substitute.

"When I get the chance, it's best to treat it with the lowest-grade hardener, or get my hands on even better materials." Luke picked up the crate and dumped all of the pitch-black alloy out.

Next, under Luke's direction, Anaka and Oubia used plasma sabers to cut the materials, while Rozana and Amitan were responsible for transporting the cut pieces over to him.

The Black Roses possessed exquisite blade-work, achieving cutting precision down to the millimeter. Soon, Luke had a collection of metal blanks of uniform size.

Utilizing the heat generated by one of the Lord of War's auxiliary thrusters, he re-melted and shaped these metal blanks. Then, with a crudely improvised hammer, he hammered away in the vacuum of space...

Luke was astonished to find that manufacturing things in space was much simpler than on Earth. There was no need to account for gravity, oxidation, or even cooling issues. None of these factors existed in a space environment.

Humanity had yet to take this step forward. Luke felt that only by learning to smelt and manufacture in a space environment could Earth's technology truly step into the realm of a cosmic civilization. The two were simply on completely different levels when it came to efficiency and universality.

Without stepping into space, humanity would never understand just how narrow the Earth truly was.

A few hours later.

Luke manually hammered out a massive pile of parts, replacing every single damaged component in the Lord of War's joints and transmission assemblies. Parts crafted by hand inevitably came with minor errors, requiring dozens of reworks along the way, but the major task was finally accomplished.

Luke piloted the Storm back inside the Lord of War, and the two combined in a magnificent sequence. The Lord of War's eyes flashed brightly, and its two arms moved without a hitch, flexible as before.

Luke felt refreshed and full of drive. He then repeated the process to repair the Lord of War's two legs as well.

Although he couldn't completely replace every single damaged component—leaving the multi-layered internal armor untouched because fixing it would interfere with complex composite systems and potentially trigger the life-support systems—he had to let those remain as they were.

However, the primary transmission system had fully recovered, eliminating the awkward jamming issues from before.

As a result, using mecha martial arts with the Lord of War was no longer a problem. Furthermore, thanks to the strength of the alien alloy, high-intensity maneuvers like the Illusionary Sword Dance could now be executed without issue.

Luke roughly estimated that the Lord of War's combat capability had recovered significantly, reaching at least seventy percent of its original state.

Having tasted success, Luke intended to ambush another Chitauri transport.

He prepared to repair the Lord of War's main propulsion system next, which was equally crucial. The materials from before were almost entirely used up. During his repairs, Amitan had reported that several more Chitauri transports had successively passed by near the asteroid belt.

These transports appeared to be delivering supplies to those two Chitauri motherships.

"In that case, those two Chitauri motherships must have suffered some damage in the nuclear blast too? Judging by the time, the next transport should be arriving soon..."

His inner Garen was getting restless for another sneak attack.